The argument from intrinsic value: A critique

Bioethics

Volumn 14, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 228-239

  Stretton, Dean ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ABORTION; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; MEDICAL DECISION MAKING; MEDICAL ETHICS; MORALITY; PATIENT RIGHT; PHYSICIAN ATTITUDE; REVIEW;

ABORTION AND UNBORN HUMAN LIFE (LEE, P.); ANALYTICAL APPROACH; BEGINNING OF LIFE; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; MORAL POLICY; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH;

ABORTION, INDUCED; BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; EMBRYO; ETHICS; FETUS; HUMANS; INDIVIDUALITY; LIFE; PERSONHOOD; VALUE OF LIFE;

EID: 0033924323     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8519.00192     Document Type: Review

References (20)

1. P. Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life (Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1996), esp. pp. 24-8.
2. The car, computer, book and peach have instrumental value: I value them not for themselves, but because of what they can produce. I value my car because it can get me from A to B, thus helping to satisfy my desires; I value the peach because eating it helps to keep me healthy; and so on. The antique clock has emotional value: I value it not for what it can produce (it is broken, and so is not useful for much at all), but because it is a family heirloom to which I have an emotional attachment. The grain of sand, so far as I can see, has no value at all.
3. I owe this distinction and my remarks about it to Jeff McMahan (private correspondence).
4. Lee in fact refers to 'higher mental acts' (Abortion and Unborn Human Life, p. 25), but rationality and self-consciousness are presumably what he has in mind.
5. Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, p. 27.
6. J. McMahan, 'Cloning, Killing, and Identity', Journal of Medical Ethics, 25 (1999), p. 81. McMahan believes it is 'more plausible to suppose that a human organism does not begin to exist until about fourteen days after fertilisation', when a certain level of integrated functioning first appears (p. 82).
7. Some of the issues here are discussed in Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, ch. 3; and Alan Holland, 'A Fortnight of My Life is Missing: a discussion of the status of the human "pre-embryo"', Journal of Applied Philosophy, 7, 1 (1990), pp. 25-37.
8. Some of the issues here are discussed in Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, ch. 3; and Alan Holland, 'A Fortnight of My Life is Missing: a discussion of the status of the human "pre-embryo"', Journal of Applied Philosophy, 7, 1 (1990), pp. 25-37.
9. The latter view is defended in J. McMahan, Killing at the Margins of Life (Oxford University Press, New York, forthcoming).
10. Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, p. 27. This is the reference to 'basic rights' which I mentioned earlier.
11. ibid., p. 28.
12. Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, p. 55.
13. The term 'intrinsic property' is sometimes used to mean just 'non-relational property'. I have avoided this definition, as it appears that some intrinsic properties are relational. Arguably, David was essentially created by Michelangelo, and I am essentially the offspring of my parents. These essential properties are relational. Yet surely a thing's essential properties are intrinsic to it. The properties just mentioned are therefore both intrinsic and relational. So 'intrinsic' cannot mean 'non-relational'. On the other hand, (3a′) is still true (I believe) if we do take 'intrinsic' to mean 'non-relational'. For, at least in the case of living things, it is hard to see how any sort of relational property could make a thing deserve value and respect.
14. It is not by definition true, since to say that a thing deserves value and respect in its own right (i.e., is intrinsically valuable) is not the same as saying that the thing is valuable by virtue of its intrinsic properties. Still, the latter does seem to follow from the former.
15. On such a proposal, the being is intrinsically valuable to degree D or above by virtue of instantiating rational and self-conscious states. This should not be confused with the separate claim that the states themselves are (in some sense) intrinsically valuable.
16. Lee grants that human persons are identical with their organisms (Abortion and Unborn Human Life, pp. 33-7). Extending this claim to cover all earthly persons is a trivial addition, so presumably he would grant this as well.
17. Cf. J. Stone, 'Why Potentiality Matters', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 17, 4 (1987), p. 823. I am assuming, then, that a being can have rights only if it can attain some form of consciousness.
18. As Jeff McMahan has pointed out to me, some pro-lifers hold that what has a right to life is neither an organism nor an immaterial substance, but rather a union of an organism with an immaterial soul. It is not clear that this view is coherent, let alone plausible. How can body and soul combine to form a distinct substance with its own persistence conditions, any more than (say) my left shoe and my telephone can likewise combine to form a distinct substance with its own persistence conditions? Perhaps there is an answer to this; but we need to see it. The 'body-soul union' view also requires support before it can be considered plausible. Until then, it remains implausible for pro-lifers to deny that what has a right to life is an organism.
19. This might be denied. One could hold (1) that we are identical with our organisms, and (2) that we are essentially Lockean persons (i.e., rational, self-conscious beings; this is not, of course, the sense in which I have been using the term 'person'). On this view embryos, despite being organisms, are not the same organisms as the adult organisms into which they develop, since the latter are Lockean persons while the former are not. This view, however, is of no use to pro-lifers: it is inconsistent with premise (1) in Lee's argument, since it entails that the foetus is not the same entity as the intrinsically valuable entity into which it develops. (I owe this point to Michael Burke.)
20. Of course, one could hold that what is rational and self-conscious - and hence what has personhood and intrinsic value - is something other than the organism, for example the higher brain or (non-Cartesian) mind. The crucial point, however, is that given our working assumption that earthly persons are identical with their organisms, what has personhood and intrinsic value is the organism; it cannot be anything else. 20 For helpful discussion and comments, I am grateful to Patrick Lee, two anonymous Bioethics referees, and especially Jeff McMahan. I am also grateful for the support of Nicholas Miller, Miranda Tetlow, and Kevin Mayes.